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‘Getting an Edge in 2023’ as an SME – Part III

Part III – Business plans for growth, adopting a systems thinking approach and digitalisation for SME’s

Having an annual plan including scenario testing

Making the most of opportunities whilst shielding the business from the difficulties facing the UK in 2023 is all about adopting a positive mindset as a business owner. Confidence is needed to retain that optimism to meet the challenges ahead and a significant part of that can be derived from creating a business plan for 2023, and one which will cover the next 3-5 years.

When the future is uncertain ‘hoping for the best’ is unlikely to help. The likely influences on the business should be fully mapped and considered as a part of a vibrant plan for 2023. The SME owner is the expert in their field and in the market they are operating within, so, with a little support, thinking through some of the scenarios of the change factors operating on their business, the plan creates a necessary certainty. This should include accounting for potential decreases in income over certain timescales, accessing supply chains, considering the most fruitful trading markets and developing sustainability options. This planning will also assist business owners to examine UK approaches to funding support for SME’s and for any specific targeted funding streams.

The process of scenario testing within the plan not only releases stress, but it also unleashes creativity and leads to the development of plans to meet each scenario. This sort of thinking can be very helpful alongside a solid professional and personal growth plan for the SME owner.

An SME owner can engage their staff in some of the scenario planning and testing, this will not only increase engagement but is also highly likely to yield some fabulous new ideas.  

Planning creates certainty, open for business and open to ideas

Extracting value from the plan

The true value of an annual business plan with scenario testing is derived from the certainty that it provides that is needed to fuel the ambitions of an ambitious SME. It creates resilience at these turbulent times and it uniquely positions the SME to decide whether it is going to ‘hope for the best’ in the storm, or it is going to weatherproof the vessel and set sail ever more ambitiously. The SME owner can then consider how it looks to finance options and scenarios, including the potential to build reserves for future storms. These reviews must include pricing policies, market research of competitors and planning for a pricing policy that remains competitive but softens the blow of predicted increased costs and overheads. These plans also enable the SME to raise finance from financial institutions or from UK Government funding streams if looking toward growth to take advantage of those businesses losing trade due to an absence of planning.

Your quick summary of the benefits of your plan this year

  • Creating clarity about the way forward for the SME and its people including stating the priorities for the plan period
  • Creating contingencies for influences and opportunities operating on the business
  • Creating certainty for leaders and employees working toward established goals
  • Creating opportunities for financing using the plan
  • Creating avenues for Government funding through market scanning
  • Creating a vibrant marketing plan recognising opportunities and constraints
  • Creating a vital buffer for the potential turbulence of 2023
  • Creating a list of priorities
  • Creating a product or service pricing plan for the year
  • Creating a training and development plan for the business owner and all staff
Using systems thinking to map and refine the business

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking was first used in the private sector to drive efficiency and value in production processes. The use of systems thinking was then developed for the public sector by John Seddon and has been used more extensively to drive effectiveness and efficiency and specifically as a means to continue to deliver statutory services through the austerity period since 2010.

During the challenges of 2023 there can be nothing timelier and more useful to employ in an SME. This is a process that supports the SME owner to deliver huge financial and efficiency benefits and can be independently driven through the business and each team with the support of a business coach. The initial theory followed the resets performed within Toyota motors and harnessed innovation with no single process of performance measure being sacrosanct.

Using efficiency as the driver of every process, building the business processes from the ground based on the pure demand for the services/ products of the SME unleashes much more creativity and streamlined services that cost less and are much closer to what the customer may need. The smaller size and flexibility of SME’s makes them much more likely to yield rapid results from systems thinking than the process of turning around large conglomerates who are more like oil tankers in terms of business dexterity. Each process to deliver a service or product is carefully mapped, checked for necessity and for the value it adds which often results in a redesign creating efficiency whilst unleashing the creativity and commitment of employees getting engaged in the systems thinking process.

The challenges of 2023 are entirely suitable for rethinking and going through a deliberate process of ‘creative unlearning’. This is liberating and in many ways mirrors what many SME’s had to do during Covid in rethinking their delivery and communication platforms due to health and legal restrictions on customers and employees. In this case the creative unlearning will create a cutting edge in the forthcoming challenges and not only equip an SME to deal with constraining budgets but to examine new markets and innovative ways to service customer / client demands.

Embracing digital service delivery in all areas of the business

Digitilisation for SME’s in 2023 – UK strength and opportunity

The need for SME’s to examine greater digitalisation has rarely been as pressing as it will be in 2023 in the UK. During 2022 Ionos completed an extensive survey of UK SME’s compared to their EU counterparts to see how well the UK is positioned to capitalise on the opportunities available in the digital space. Businesses are faced with challenging supply chain crises and with major retail stock level shortfalls at their lowest since 1983 so unleashing the capabilities of automated stock management is vital. Digital service delivery and the growing use of Artificial Intelligence can support even greater SME integration into global markets by lowering transaction costs and associated transport, import and export costs. The survey of over 1000 SME’s showed that 70% see digital as the essential way to build their customer base and 63% stated that it is THE major factor for them in revenue growth. The report shows that SME’s have huge opportunities to outperform EU competitors with 80% of UK SME’s having a website, 76% having their own email connected to their domain and 64% using digital marketing through social media. This compares favourably to countries such as France with only 52% having a website and 47% using social media.

Digitalisation also supports innovation and allows SME’s to compile data and to analyse their own operations in new ways, enhancing performance.

Recent surveys by the British Chamber of Commerce show that for SME’s, digital service delivery is a pain point that they seek to maximise competitively in 2023 :-

  • 37% believe they wish to bridge gaps to manage multiple technology suppliers, contracts, and licences as they navigate 2023
  • 25% stated that their current digital tools require more investment to be competitive
  • 22% wish to improve digital data security in 2023
  • 17% want their current suppliers connectivity to be more adaptable to the changing circumstances

Another survey from the British Chambers of Commerce and Vodafone, of almost 900 UK SME’s reveals that the issues SME’s are facing managing their digital tools will require focus for 2023.

Yet despite the benefits and opportunities that digital technologies bring, many SMEs continue to lag in adoption. This means that digitalisation is a massive opportunity in 2023 requiring more flexible and innovative funding sources to be pursued to support SME’s in their growth plans.

Digital Marketing for 2023

SME’s will need to develop a greater understanding of their brand, its uniqueness and how this can be portrayed best on a number of social media and advertising platforms, including those that are emerging as greater influences of business such as Tik Tok, Instagram and LinkedIn. In 2023, it will not be possible to prosper as an SME without an adapting and growing social media presence.

One of the top challenges for small businesses in 2022 will be meeting their customer’s expectations for e-commerce. In the US a McKinsey survey published in October 2020 found that companies are three times likelier than before the pandemic to conduct at least 80% of their customer interactions online. According to this same survey, the first half of 2020 alone saw an increase in e-commerce equivalent to that of the previous ten years. This demonstrates that significant challenge such as Covid gives rise to more inventive business solutions, and this applies equally to the scale of challenge and opportunity in 2023 for SME’s. By 2024, experts estimate that online shopping will be responsible for nearly 22% of all retail purchases globally. SME’s must adapt to this challenge in the mobile space when delivering products and services.

Next week is the final part of this series of blogs creating a total plan for UK SME owners to meet the challenges of 2023. The series closes with a look at how businesses will need to recruit top talent in a highly competitive marketplace. Methods to retain their most talented people and to show greater investment in them to become SME employers of choice will also be covered. Finally the blog will discuss the evidenced benefits of coaching to business owners themselves, their teams and to the business as a whole.

For the previous two parts of this blog series see the links below…

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‘Getting an Edge in 2023’ as an SME – Part II

Part II – Tackling the economic headwinds of energy and fuel costs, inflation and raised borrowing costs

         

Creating business economic stability through a deliberate plan

This is Part II of a series of four blogs examining how SME’s can not only plan for the difficulties facing them in 2023, but potentially capitalise on some of the unique opportunities surrounding them. This series is about setting a course for growth in these times and in so doing getting ahead of the competition with a flying start to 2023. In Part I of the blog series last week the creativity of the SME owner in leading with emotional intelligence and empathy was explored. (Getting an edge in 2023 as an SME – Part I)

SME’s are the backbone of economic recovery in the UK as a whole and there is no doubt that current and future strategy will seek to support such huge hubs of enterprise. In the OECD nations SME’s make up almost 99 percent of all firms and over 70 percent of all jobs. SME’s also contribute more than 50 percent of Gross Domestic Product in high-income countries around the world.

Trading Market Opportunities

Here in the UK, inflation has now topped 10% as we look toward 2023. There is increasing strain in the labour market putting upward pressure on wages, which in itself is made worse by a distinct lack of skilled labour post Brexit. This all means that there is increased pressure on an SME’s working capital. Approaching the 2023 new year, SME owners will have to significantly balance the need to retain and attract skilled staff. This will require incentivisation whilst ensuring sufficient working capital to maintain and to grow their business operations.

For those SME’s relying on trade with the EU the Institute of Directors have found that when asking its members what would improve their business operations, overwhelmingly, they want a better and new working relationship with the EU, their biggest and nearest market.  The current political backdrop is that Government is looking for a solution to trading with Europe and the relaxation of immigration rules for skilled labour. The SME owner will have to examine trade press and Government announcements for changes in trade rules with the EU and also for national and local funding opportunities. In the SME market in 2023 then owners must also track changing markets locally and abroad that may become more conducive to their own individual SME type of business.

Sustainability as profitability and future proofing

Additionally, SMEs are increasingly environmentally aware and a survey by ‘takepayments.com’ found that 39% of business owners and leaders are passionate about making their business more sustainable. Having a sharp focus on understanding the social responsibility aspect of the SME’s individual enterprise and making this a priority for 2023 will create an edge in business. Additionally, consumers are increasingly more aware that they wish to buy from or only do business with organisations that have environmentally friendly policies. Adopting green energy and conservation policies has also been shown to be an investment that will increase customer base and ultimately place an SME in the vanguard of green friendly trading whilst potentially also becoming a part of cutting edge service provision. Legislation is already tightening on fuel sources, energy emissions and tax incentives requiring green friendly SME’s.

Preparing for 2023 to push sustainability trading makes both sound financial and ethical sense. In several areas such as the development of batteries, the UK has the potential to demonstrate business leadership across the globe. Considering how to show green credentials from the smallest beginnings such as paperless systems through to broader company energy policies will place an SME in a stronger position.

Supply chain review

Local SME supply chains

The supply chain difficulties for SME’s that were exacerbated during Brexit and Covid have also been added to by problems created by the conflict in Ukraine. With increased energy and fuel prices added to the delays, SME’s are experiencing costly and severe delays in manufacturing and shipping. However, to limit the impact of this crisis, UK SME’s can look to examine how they increase their resilience by looking at local and more accessible supply chain partners. This approach can create business marketing opportunities in the local trading arena by clearly demonstrating ‘local investing’. The supply chain can also be widened beyond the local to examine which markets may have more resilient suppliers in them and therefore be less subject to the damage of short supply affecting their trading position and their reliability for customers.  

SME’s can examine their use of automation and also the status of their trading partners in terms of the use of less dependent manual technical processes. This also applies to service providers who may want to shift to greater digitilisation and online service provision and to enhance their presence through digital marketing tools. SME’s may also want to look at timely data sharing in order to sharpen the focus of collaboration with current and potential suppliers and therefore also predict potential supply chain risks impacting on business operations before they occur.

Trust will make SME’s stand out

Supply chain data sharing and standards

Improved data sharing within their current networks and to potential markets, not only allows SME’s to improve efficiency but also increases transparency and trust. This sharing process will also encourage suppliers to share and explain all the materials and procedures that go into making and delivering their products. This information will help the SME to be confident about the supply chain, about the ethics of the suppliers on a range of ethical working practices.

SME’s also need to be more vigilant in 2023 to make sure that their suppliers have the correct accreditations and certifications. This will mean that those suppliers are bound to honour their professional associations standards which will provide better guarantees on supply and on quality. Such accreditations include ISO standards and inspection results, other examples include Ofsted inspections or CQC reviews in the education or the care sector.

SME’s countering inflationary pressure through overheads reviews

Emerse in detail to remove unnecessary overheads

Staffing approaches

The difficulties already outlined here about labour shortages and supply chain problems taken together with rising price inflation mean that SME’s have to look at cost efficiency within their operation whilst providing quality services.

Selective efficiency savings are important as there can be some unintended consequences of ill thought through and panic motivated savings. For example, cutting staffing numbers at a time when the trained labour market is stretched could result in quality and business falling rapidly due to shoddy standards. This can mean complete organisational reputational loss that lasts long beyond the pressures of a business experiencing austerity. Then in trying to get more staff afterwards, lower quality candidates requiring more training may be all that is on offer. This means that much more flexible working approaches to the current workforce may yield greater efficiencies.

Dropping the pay of personnel is also a risky process for the SME. It may result in resignations and a lower paid workforce may also lead to exploitation of individuals by unscrupulous black market staff providers. Many of my clients are working very hard to build relationships with education, colleges and training providers. This is enabling an ability to create connections with higher quality recruits who are more likely to share the values of the SME. This creates career pathways also for the individuals, and as new recruits are in training there can be some modest salary savings to be achieved. Networking with such potential sources of new people into your SME is vital.

Other expenditure reviews

SME’s can look at all overheads and compare them to the absolute necessity of them in creating their quality business product or service. This might include undertaking reviews of office space or potentially transferring aspects of the business to less expensive locations. Reviewing hybrid working policies may allow SME’s to save on overhead costs such as energy,  whilst boosting employee productivity and wellbeing. PWC report that 57% of global leaders said that they saw an improvement in their workforce performance following the introduction of hybrid working policies. Changed working policies such as shortened weeks but extended hours such as 3 day and 4 day weeks may also offer mutually beneficial solutions for some SME’s and their teams.

In Part III of this series looks at the advantages of business planning for both the SME itself and for the ways to ensure that the SME’s greatest asset, its people, are retained and that future business growth also enjoys the ability to recruit the best new people in 2023.

If you wish to know more please get in touch.

Mark at Applebright Coaching

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‘Getting an Edge’ in 2023 as an SME – Part I

Part I – Growing the business when facing a storm

Navigating to a successful 2023

This is Part I in a series of four blogs detailing how Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s) should be planning to meet the challenges of 2023. Rather than setting a course for ‘survival’ following a detailed plan will enable a growth mindset that will pay dividends throughout the challenges of 2023.

These are difficult times and they are going to require careful navigation in 2023. The single most impactive thing an SME owner can do when looking forward is to create a plan for this next 12 months that tests and challenges both themselves and their business. Planning can mitigate risks and create options to ease the pain points that will be experienced in the next year. SME business owners will need to look to their strengths and make the most of those so that the challenge can also become an opportunity.

Larger organisations are also finding these times as difficult. Only Apple Inc. have grown profits in line with expectations of the big tech giants in the last 12 months with such stalwart companies as Amazon and Microsoft experiencing huge turbulence in profits.  As in life, confidence, certainty, planning and self-belief can go a very long way in an SME. Here in the UK in a recent Institute of Directors survey members reported that despite the challenges they remain optimistic about the future, with 60% expecting continued revenue growth this year. There is an understanding that profit margins are going to be affected and that increasing costs cannot all be passed on to the customer if the SME is to stay competitive. The approach to pricing and marketing is key this next year above all others.

The challenges for SME owners are never-ending. They will always have to find innovative ways within their 12 month plan to stay afloat, but also to gain a competitive edge by addressing the core problems that they are able to anticipate. In 2023, the challenges for business owners are even greater as the economy has only made an anaemic recovery from the pandemic and is experiencing increased costs created by the disruption of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These times require not just innovation and boldness but they also require transformative thinking.

The core elements for the SME plan in 2023 must be about growth, upscaling and about creating significant transformation by shaking off their ‘survival’ mode. There are some opportunities to create change in this adversity that will support business growth in the long-term.

Emotionally intelligent business ownership is a must.

Leading the business with emotional intelligence and empathy

There have been times when leading with compassion and emotional intelligence may have been considered as faddism or as an optional extra. To be competitive in 2023 emotional intelligence in business is absolutely essential. This will enable the business owner to perform at a higher level and similarly allow development for the people that work for the SME. Many are describing the ‘great resignation’ following the pandemic in which individuals are considering their careers and their futures. This is leading to difficulties for all organisations, including SME’s. It is vital that leaders understand that part of the reflection for their people is that they want to feel safe and more cared for and that this need for care in their work, if met by reciprocated compassion, empathy and bravery by business owners, not only will they keep the loyalty of their best people, it will also cement greater team spirit and encourage ever greater levels of discretionary effort to be given.

The use of emotional intelligence, the demonstration of compassion as a leader must start with the way that the leader of the SME looks after themselves. Even in an organisation working frequent long hours there are ways for the leader to manage their own wellbeing in a way that encourages others to do so. This breaks an increasing ‘presenteeism’ culture that can prevail when leaders feel threatened by the sort of challenges that are being faced now and will continue into 2023.

The following article published on LinkedIn by Professor Amanda Kirby contains a really useful 10 point plan for each business owner to practice what they preach and think about how to show self-compassion and to lead others with compassion.

Compassionate leadership could limit the ‘great resignation’ (linkedin.com) Prof. Amanda Kirby

This takes the qualities of emotional intelligence and empathy a stage further in that it is about what is provided for the employees of an SME. This is the fuel in the tank that will power the growth of the SME through 2023 and energise the ability to meet the challenges faced. It will certainly avoid one of the biggest challenges facing businesses, burnout of staff. There are practical benefits of successful wellness and wellbeing plans for employees but also having such an approach is saleable in the job market and can guarantee getting better quality recruits and retaining the best and most skilled staff when businesses are battling to keep their people.

Research from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) shows that offering health and wellbeing benefits to staff can play a valuable role in also boosting productivity. Three in five SME’s state that providing health and wellbeing benefits has significant impact on supporting the productivity of their company. This increases to 7 out of 10 in medium size businesses. Worryingly, only one in five are aware of their legal requirement to provide information on benefits to new employees by their first day of work. It may seem like a luxury for an SME in 2023 to engage with staff and consider what can be done to enhance wellness and wellbeing. Yet, in thinking about the clear and demonstrable link between such programmes and increased productivity, increased performance and reduced absenteeism they are a must. This equates to a reduction in overheads and an increase in profits to the business. The programmes need not necessarily involve huge investment and can be made up of healthy snacks, great hygiene, workplace access to mental health support and fitness plans from local gymnasiums as examples.  

In Part II of this series look forward to pointers for how the SME can plan to counter the economic headwinds that are predicted in 2023…

  

If you wish to learn more and to chat about coaching get in touch

  

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Six tools to balance your business and home life when they collide

So, the summer is over, the children are back to school, what are you doing with all your spare time?  (That you so wish you had!)

You are working hard as a business owner and entrepreneur or in your chosen career and the transition from shapeshifting through the summer between home and your business or work will have been exhausting and an endurance test, but now the frustration is ramping up because even with the children back at school or nursery, that pressure is no less. The frustration is largely aimed at yourself because somehow you perceive that you should be feeling the benefit of the sun setting on the summer silly season of juggling.

This year of course, that juggle has come at the end of two years in which family and work life has been turned upside down through the pressures of living with covid, trying to keep jobs and businesses buoyant and potentially simultaneously becoming a home schoolteacher as well as a carer for other family members. The toll of all of this is both physical and mental and the result of it can be a growing self-doubt that your control over your own destiny is ebbing away into the far distance.

A toolkit to help you find your balance

These tools are hard change, but they will work for you

Has September brought you back to that familiar feeling of being overcommitted? Do you sense that the old enemy of overwhelm and white noise is deafening you? Are you feeling stressed out and completely out of balance? Are any or all of these happening for you?

  • Working hours feeling out of control as you catch up after the holiday?
  • Feeling tense, stressed, or overwhelmed with the constant juggle?
  • Missing out on quality time with family or friends?
  • Eating quick meals and have no time for real exercise?
  • Feeling exhausted and wondering when your mojo will ever come back?
  • Falling behind on important work tasks, your to do lists and your life admin?
  • Sleeping poorly again?

Then this toolkit is for you!!! It will make you feel less stress, more in control, more productive and create the satisfaction and fulfilment that you deserve in creating more quality personal time, increased revenue in, and focus on your business and there is only one cost to you… you will lose your ‘overwhelm’.

“The ONE tip I can passionately share with others about balancing motherhood while running your business is this: Understand and accept that something’s gotta give. Sometimes the housework has to give. Sometimes the business has to give. Sometimes my marriage has to give. Sometimes the kids needs have to give. The only true goal to a balanced life should be to make sure that everything doesn’t give at once.”

Renee Wood, President, The Comfort Company

Walking the tightrope of a healthy worklife balance can be achieved

Tool #1 – Start by saying ‘no’, start by working out what you will stop. If you are saying ‘yes’ to changing your worklife balance then you have to be saying ‘no’ to so many other things! Say ‘no’.

Firstly, remember that this is your life and your profession / business, there is no formula and no perfect solution that others have magically found, so make sure that you are ploughing your own furrow by creating the plan for change that suits you and your family. Turn down the white noise of others who always know best!!! The hardest thing for proactive people like you is that saying ‘no’ is really hard because it feels like one of two things :-

  1. Letting others down when of course they need you, they are used to all that you do!
  2. Letting yourself down because saying ‘no’ must be failure, you always keep it all together no matter what!

Start the process of saying ‘no’ closer to home, start it with ‘you’. Not saying no to your own striving to cram 48 hours into 24 hours is your first enemy in truly getting in front of this feeling of being stranded on the endless merry-go-round that has just replaced the circus juggling of the summer holiday!

Tool #2 – Think about 12 months ahead and of the ebb and flow of your work, business and home life – plan for them now!

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy” Helmute Van Moltke 1880

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” Mike Tyson (appraising Van Moltke!)

So plans can be tricky ! Though having no plan at all definitely guarantees chaos, you can make this approach work for you. Only you know when the busy times are in your work and business and how they may coincide with very busy times at home such as Christmas, birthdays, holiday periods and other such commitments. This year you can guarantee that Christmas will be in the last week of December!

Can you prevent these times from being busy? (NO)

Can you create time that doesn’t exist to make them easier? (NO)

Can you trim your overstretching more rather than the Christmas tree? (YES)

Can you be kinder to yourself? (YES)

Can you delegate more at these annual pain points? (YES)

Can you plan and prepare others for this now (YES)

This is the diary equivalent of saying no to your yourself and to others. Planning for it can make others on point when you need them to be and some other expectations will need to be scaled back at these times to show true kindness to yourself. This part of your 12 month plan is a vital part of your essential personal and professional growth. Look after yourself.

Tool #3 – Delegating may be a ‘trust’ challenge, but you have to do it!

This links very closely to Tool 2 above, delegating is one of the ways that you can overcome known pinch points both at home and at work or in the business. It can be constructive for those that you entrust delegation to and can be a positive benefit in their training and developing. Delegation also applies at home and you may have to enrol the support of family members, pitching in and doing more to get the vital breaks that you need.  Delegating is one of the key aspects to achieving a healthy worklife balance.

I can hear you now as you read this, ‘Mmmmm, yes delegation is all well and good but it’s easier to do it myself, it will take less time than teaching someone else, will it ever be done to my standards, I’ll only have to redo it’.

This is the hard part of delegation, but it is worth taking time…

Train Others – Trust Others – Treat Yourself

Your time and energy is finite and by adopting this approach you are more likely to prosper in business, to prosper with your worklife balance and to feel that you are investing in yourself. There is no doubt that in the ‘trust others’ part of this will be a need to relinquish control. For more information on this see my previous article,

Fear of not being in control is natural, but how can you overcome it?

What will define your success is rethinking the reason that you are delegating by listing all of the positives that it can yield. High amongst these is freeing you up to do the things that matter the most rather than feeling bogged down in the day to day. Delegating will also sharpen the process of recruitment, selection and development of any of your key staff because you will be conscious that they must be skilled individuals as well as trusted.

If you are running a business there is a real difference between scaling up a business as a successful entrepreneur and being self-employed. Two of the key ingredients that good delegation will fuel for your successful enterprise are :-

  1. You need to ensure that you have a good quality worklife balance, this will promote your health and happiness without which success will not be sustainable.
  2. You must ensure that the business is working for you and not you for the business. This is about choice, freewill and carving the time for you in terms of home and family as well as time to consider and focus on your personal and professional development and the growth and upscaling of the business. You working for your business is purely being self-employed and not about you being able to use your energy and passion as an entrepreneur picking the strategic direction of your business or organisation.
The balancing conundrum is baffling without a plan

Tool # 4 – Create boundaries and ensure you are disciplined over your working hours – don’t become that ‘always on’ leader!

This positively links to the mantra in Tool 3,

Make your business work for you, not you working for your business!

This in many ways sounds like entrepreneurs’ heresy discussing the concept of being aware and setting yourself boundaries of how long your working day will be day by day and in total number of working hours that you want to work weekly. Long hours can become a habit or addiction which you feel is the essential ingredient of success but over the longer term this results in working hard but not smart. It also results in a decreasing return on the hours that you invest and in a physical and mental toll that can be serious for you and your family. Studies have demonstrated that 40 hours a week has been proven to be the optimal working week to keep unnecessary stress and overwhelm at arm’s length. In the UK an average of no more than 48 hours in a week has been a legal requirement for many years. In the UK there is also medical evidence that working 11 hour days increases your risk of heart attack by 67%, a sobering thought!

Boundaries thinking can be supported by the notion that you should treat yourself as well as you treat your own staff. We recognise that at times there will be busy pulses of work but with careful planning and with boundaries placed on your working day and week you can become a game changer!

This is a hard change for you because you may be hard-wired to work maximum and unhealthy numbers of hours. Watch yourself, keep a working hours diary so that you can review how you are doing. Make this issue a part of your 12 month business plan, be hard on yourself, face the mirror and work out what is driving your behaviours.

A break from your ‘always on’ can feel liberating

Boundaries and a business digital detox – On the subject of boundaries it is time to think about what issues might be drawing you into the always on culture of leadership. Just as in life, it is very easy to get drawn into social media work, emails on your laptops and other mobile devices. The outcome of this is long hours, no clear relaxation time and a blurring of your personal and work boundaries.

How to do this? There are a number of considerations for this. Work out how your business hours relate to your digital business activity, get them shorter and get them aligned. Consider what will work best for you with your tech! You may want different work to home devices or at least ensure that the browsers, email clients and apps that you use are different for domestic and work. There are a number of health benefits for this and some tools that you can use to ease the ‘always on’ digital white noise such as sleep modes on your devices, automated chat facilities on your website rather than always email or messaging.

Tool #5 – Health and wellbeing, you-time, mini-breaks and time to reflect

So you will already know that boosting your physical activity reduces your stress levels and improves your health and wellbeing. Creating a focus on your wellness is not a luxury with the spare minute here and there that you can find, it has to be a part of your 12 month plan and that has to be translated to every day, every week and every month. Making sure that you have created time, no matter how small, for physical activity will help your body, soul and mind. It will reenergize you and is a great time to have cutting-edge ideas with the white noise of the work and home day being suspended.

This is another one of those tools that is about ‘hard change’. For it to really have a chance of surviving first contact with the enemy, real life, then you will need to combine it with Tool # 1 – say no at work and at home to create a block of time that is for you. Then combine it with some of the tricks of exercising when you are on your everyday activities too. You need to consider that prioritising time for health and fitness is not a luxury but an essential. It will lead to many other benefits such as your health, your sleep quality and giving you the positivity to tackle your workday with even more vigour. Happiness in this context is about happiness in all areas of your life. The impact is both physical and mental in spending time on yourself for your essential fitness. Looking after yourself is very much like the analogy of how to behave in an air crash.

Get Your Oxygen and then you can take care of everyone else around you including your business. Just like on the plane….when there is turbulence and the masks descend….you don’t take care of everybody else first….you also put the mask on yourself…get your oxygen and then take care of everyone else around you. the ONLY way to balance a healthy business and a happy home is to take care of yourself first so you have the energy to care for all the needs of clients and kids. 

Tracy Fox, Having a heart for God.

You should make sure that you have good blocks of time for your fitness but you can also complement them by being innovative with small bursts of exercise whilst you are on other essential tasks. This might have to be a reality on some days, there is no doubt that between your job and your family, it can be a challenge to find time always  to head to the gym.

So why not do some exercise in your office or your kitchen? Calisthenic exercises can be combined within your normal workday such as taking 10 minutes to walk up and down the stairs in your work building or whilst out shopping or collecting a delivery. If you are driving to a meeting there are breathing exercises you can do, podcasts to take in, to prepare yourself, to relax and to control your heart rate. In the evening or at times when you might be able to get 5 or 10 minutes to relax you could use one of many relaxation apps available.

Check out these workplace exercise ideas.

https://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/exercise-at-work/10-office-exercises-you-can-do-secretly.htm

https://www.billymurray.online/desk-stretch

Take mini-breaks to reset yourself –  The value of a very brief time-out cannot be underestimated, it will totally restore your confidence that you are gaining back control of your day, it will bring down your heart rate and it will almost certainly make you even stronger and more effective for the remainder of your day. The ‘always on’ mentality that you have can equate to a ‘nose to the grindstone’ effect that lasts from the moment the alarm clock goes off or alternatively, your little cherub crawls into bed next to you, to the final moments that exhaustion takes over you last thing at night. Breaks of just 10 minutes during which time you step away from your work focus to do something totally unrelated – like breathing exercises, Pilates stretches or a just a quick walk around the block – will hugely impact on reducing your stress levels.

Tool # 6 – Create a diary plan of your day / week and month – Love your plan!

Your calendar / diary / planner is your saviour!. This should be your one-stop shop to be able to see what you have on during every day/week/month. Consider colour coding your activities and make sure that you have combined work and home in this diary! This toolkit advocates separation of your work and home life in as many ways that you can achieve, but if you want to protect your time to gain that balance, then this is the one part of your toolkit that advocates the creation of combining in one place work and home commitments.

This plan will be better if you can create more automation in it and be able to see it on your phone – this means that you have given yourself the very best chance to avoid the imbalance of clashing work and home priorities – this means that the decision is yours about what you do do and what you don’t! It will be your saviour in preventing you from booking a client meeting when you have that all important anniversary meal to go for.

Take this from being your reactive tool to view your busyness in one place (YIKES!), to making it work proactively for you! Start to block time out for you, time to think, time to exercise, time to meet friends, time to spend longer on the school pick up. Delegate to make this happen!

When you start this, make sure that you have blocked out one weekend every month for doing absolutely nothing or at the very least, as little as possible! Recharge your batteries!

Whilst on the subject of ‘time’, Richard Branson has a really innovative approach to time management as an entrepreneur that works best for him. He tries to make sure that he does more of what he really enjoys doing such as hobbies and sport and he finds that this energises him and as a result of that he feels that he finds ways to get more into his day and does the tasks that his business empire needs, as well as flying into space too of course!

Richard Branson’s Genius Method for Creating Time: How to Pursue Your Dreams and Achieve More, No Time Management Tools Required
https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/richard-branson-on-how-to-pursue-your-dreams-achieve-more-without-time-management-tools.html

Learning from others will speed your journey

You can be the author of your balance in life

Give it a try!

I hope that you find this toolkit beneficial. There will be trial and error in using it and ways that you customise it specifically for your own circumstances. Changing the outcomes of clashing business and home responsibilities is essential for success and happiness and it should form the heart of your 12 month plan.

If you would like a free copy of this toolkit please get in touch with your details and I will email it directly to you. Otherwise feel free to use the 6 tools contained here and make a fresh start to make the difference that you can make.

https://applebrightcoaching.co.uk/welcome/contact/

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Fear of not being in control is natural, but how can you overcome it?

How often do you feel stressed by the fact that you can’t control something or its outcome? Your 6 point plan will make a positive difference.

Feeling desperate image when you cannot get in control and it causes anxiety. Holding up a help sign
The feeling of loss of control is painful!

The sense that you need to gain control of an issue but cannot do so is all consuming and dominates every thought when it takes hold of you. As desperate as these feelings are, there are solutions that are in your control.

  • This feeling is painful because it is based on fear
  • This feeling is painful because we are not the best version of ourselves when it takes hold
  • This feeling is painful because it creates an anxiety to control things beyond the original issue

When we feel this way a huge part of us knows that we are potentially being self-indulgent, we feel that others just don’t understand why gaining this control is so all consuming. This means that we can’t possibly rest until we have forced ourselves onto our perception of the solution.

But just hang on a moment, be a little kinder to yourself before you start to rethink your process of taking control. This article includes some tips and a 6 point plan to get in front of this painful emotion.

So how does this pain feel when you fear the lack of control?

This fear of losing control means that we are certain something is about to get out of hand and almost impulsively we start to try to grapple for control. Our instinct to protect is as natural to us as holding our breath when we go underwater. A broad array of fears takes over and they are all such difficult feelings that our instinctive brain seeks to avoid them and forces us to behave to protect. These feelings may include hopelessness, powerlessness, despair, rage, grief and loneliness.

It is the fear of feeling our instinctive emotion in an unbearable way that again harkens back to the human instinct to survive at any cost and to stay alive. We project this fear onto others in a doomed to fail effort to prevent those awful feelings and that projection comes in the form of trying to take control over the outcome. It is important to understand this better, this cognitive recognition means that :-

  • We see that this is a natural instinct
  • We start to understand it better
  • We start to demystify it
  • We start to believe and accept that we can gain a sense of personal agency

This feeling is also the root of why so many people fear change on an almost visceral level and for leaders and people going through change it can be liberating to understand this fear. We are then able to identify what this feeling is and take charge of ourselves and find our ways of understanding that our chimp brain can be corrected through rational thought processes.

Adult hand holding a child's hand summoning up images of how we often find that our need to control is instinctive from childhood
Our vulnerability causes our need to control

Why is this so important now?

The reason that understanding this now is so important is that post covid and at a time of economic crisis there is a great sense of uncertainty and a great sense of the loss of all our norms. The so-called ‘new normal’ often does not feel normal in any sense to us. These events mean that those that feel this anxiety are likely to attempt to gain control even more, they feel disenfranchised unless they get in control.

For us to be able to do well, to be successful and to be happy as these challenges are upon us as a society and as individuals then finding a way of navigating these negative emotions is important. This means that using these tools to think differently about the process of gaining control will enable us to handle change, to embrace opportunity and really start dealing with this issue here and now.

The avoidance of this behaviour will also lead to us having better relationships with those around us because the very process of gaining control can create conflict or at the very least resentment in others who are unfortunate enough to come across us on our ‘controlling’ mission!

Help is on the way, needing to stay in control is perfectly normal!

When we have this instinct to maintain the status quo and to avoid our feared inevitable destiny by taking back control, we are simply responding to our natural human instinct and also to the natural way that our brain works. The reason that we naturally do this is that from our early childhood we interpret change as uncertainty and in that state there is danger to our life. It is about our instinct to survive. It is said that 5 times every second our brain tries to assess if what we are doing and where we are is safe, if not we start to protect and disengage. This happens subconsciously as well as at a conscious level.

Why not check how you measure up on this fear?

If you try the link below you will see a brief questionnaire that will allow you to place a gauge of exactly where your focus is in terms of these fears taking control over you. This test allows you to see if you have a tendency toward an external locus of control, this means that you will be routinely worrying about aspects that you cannot influence in any way. If you have an internal locus of control then you are much less likely to behave the way that this article describes. It is a really useful process to try before you start the 6 point plan.

Your quick control checker – https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_90.htm

Demonstrates how having an internal locus of control is positive and lists the ways this is so versus an external locus which is when we feel disempowered
Where is your locus of control?

So what can you do to change your fear of losing control? Circles will do it!

This pattern of behaviour that almost constantly can create white noise in our lives can be avoided, it can be controlled by us. It really is possible to reframe the things that trigger us to try to feel back in control and as a habit that we learn we can grow to decrease our fears.

Shows how you can dispose of these fears of a lack of control like burning a post it note
We really can leave this fear behind with a new approach!

The start of this process is to ask yourself what things you honestly truly can control rather than merely influence or worry about. Some of this thinking was put out there initially by Steven Covey in ‘The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People’. In this book he considered circles of concern and circles of influence, and this has been taken further with another circle, the circle of control.

This is a fabulous way that we can differentiate between what issues might be going on in general (concern) or in some very specific cases such as improving our wellbeing through exercise, diet, positive thinking and creating more time for ourselves (control). What will typically happen without being able to apply this technique is that we may find ourselves worrying about all things and attempting to gain control over all of them.

When we discover that we cannot gain that control we may experience very specific anxieties about these issues and in the process of trying to gain control we cause damage to ourselves, waste our time, we waste our energy and there is a good likelihood that we will damage our relationships with family, friends, colleagues and potentially in a business environment, we will do damage to our business, organisation or team.

This image demonstrates how the circle of control is what you control versus matters you may influence versus matters that are a concern but you have no control in truth so worry less about them

The basis of this model is that we can disentangle all of those fears, worries and psychoses into a process where we narrow down from concerns, to issues we may have an influence over to the final matters that we alone truly have complete control over.

By doing this and by really focusing positively on letting those concerns go in terms of believing our personal mission here and now is to control such issues then we better understand our circle of concern pain points. If we then focus on being positive about where we may have an influence only and understand fully to what extent that is possible then our approach to our circle of influence can become more realistic and less fraught with anxiety.

This then allows us to truly focus our energy on what we can directly control, this then become fruitful and enables a more balanced and wellbeing driven series of actions that we learn and can repeat. This approach means that then we lighten our load of stress and worry and we prevent our natural human brain from attempting to control concerns, influence and control areas. This is a way of truly giving ourselves the energy to make a difference where we can and to give ourselves a holiday from trying to control what cannot be controlled and all of the negative consequences that this causes.

What might a typical circles of concern/influence/control chart look like for you?

This process can be done with a little time and patience to start to map the issues that trouble us into the three circles. It will be unique for each of us and it demands absolute honesty with ourselves. This is something that we are doing for ourselves and in many senses this supports us to have an internal locus of control that leads to better wellbeing, to a greater sense of personal agency and to the avoidance of the waste of energy stressing about the non-controllables.

An example of the types of issues that may appear in the circles of concern, of influence and of control
This demonstrates how clearly much of what creates our anxiety cannot be ‘controlled’

Try this to tackle your loss of control feeling – your 6 point plan

A poster for printing in which you can place your own post it notes
  1. Print out the blank circles of control poster above, this will allow you to start the process to consider your mindset on what you feel is a concern, what you have influence over or what issues you have complete control over.
  2. Make sure you are in a place where you can think and won’t be disturbed, this should definitely be a little time away from the white noise that you are putting to one side just for you.
  3. Ensure that you have some post it notes, or similar and write down the things that occur to you as concerns to you, these will be the things that have been troubling you over time and you will find it eye-opening just to write them down and to see them together. Place them inside / around your circle of concern circle.
    Prepare yourself for this list because seeing the issues together can be overwhelming but remember this process is about navigating a way to see these issues in a more philosophical way.
  4. Now, your next stage, look at your concerns again and looking at the example above try to see if any of those notes can be placed into the circles of influence or control. Controlling is a high bar though as they are entirely in your control to be placed there.
  5. Challenge yourself on those matters that are in the Concern circle, check if there is a way that you might be able to gain some influence. This might be covering issues such as tricky colleague, manager or friend relationships, but through a third party route you may be able to build some bridges, in which case this will be able to move this issue to your Circle of Influence. Think about ways you might be able to influence the things that are still in your Circle of Concern.
  6. So at this point, having truly exhausted what can be moved to the Circle of Concern and Circle of Control you now have your final list. Write them up from the post it notes or type them if you are creating a digital copy. I would recommend that you save the document on your phone or mobile device as a photo or PDF so that you can refer to them when you have feelings of growing anxiety about your feelings of a lack of control. Remember these key FACTS:-

Areas of Concern – If you look at your areas of concern that you may have been taking so personally in the past and may have been exacerbating your anxiety, in fact in truth you have no ability to influence or control them. Your values and beliefs are a huge part of your strengths and so it is ok to consider wider society issues without them dominating you and in so doing find a new found freedom. Remember they may also sit alongside other realities that are not influenceable by you such as the weather. Puts the worries into context doesn’t it?

Areas of Influence – So these sat amongst the whole range of issues that were stressing you and often meant that you felt high frustration and to a certain extent not able to clearly see what to do about them. Now in fact through this process you recognise that you cannot control them, but with some tact and diplomacy and with a plan you can get some influence over them. In many ways this is cathartic, it gives you a release and leaves you feeling that you can be more proactive in dealing with the issues themselves without feeling abject fear and the need to over-respond in gaining full personal control.

Areas of Control – so these are those that you can legitimately say are entirely your responsibility and do not rely on third parties. This will be a small list but understanding it allows you to only feel responsible for a much smaller number of issues. This hands more control to you as you focus your proactive energy at what really matters and recognising these three types of issue supports your sense of wellbeing too.

This 6 step process will give you a plan that truly demonstrates to you how you break down the myriad of worries and concerns that have been causing sleepless nights into a manageable format in which you can remind yourself how to interact with them and what you can truly control.

So, give this a go and see what differences it makes for you

As a coach I am very well aware just how common these feelings are and they can be affecting you as you read this, you may know someone else who suffers from this anxiety or you may be a manager or leader who see this in your team members. Please share these thoughts and ideas and see if they can make the difference.

https://applebrightcoaching.co.uk/welcome/contact/
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Your Online One Hour Coaching Masterclasses

One hour coaching sessions – On the go

A Coaching Workout

For many the new normal of our working lives includes some form of hybrid or remote working. For others who may have continued at work throughout this time or have recently returned fully to work the challenge of finding time to invest in ourselves, to kickstart our careers and maybe also to put into place some of the resolutions we may have made to ourselves about improving our wellbeing remains a constant challenge.

Coaching will give you that vital kickstart in your career and your wellbeing but how do you find time for it and is it affordable? In order to be completely flexible for my clients who may only be able to find an hour early in the morning, at lunch time, in the evening or over a weekend I have developed a series of online coaching sessions at £50 per session on specific subjects that are designed to fit neatly into a compressed one hour session. They can be selected individually or as a series.

Coaching and worklife balance

Weighing up the future

For many of us the last two years have meant that we have considered what we want from our personal as well as our professional lives. The question of worklife balance has been a constant feature so that greater balance and happiness can be realised. But for many even the term ‘worklife’ has been challenged and a more accurate sentiment moving forward is ‘lifework’ balance. The difference is small but subtle in that it reflects not just the time that we prefer to spend but also the notion that we ‘work to live’ rather than ‘live to work’.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list

Michelle Obama

The tools for work and life

The ‘great resignation’ effect is causing many people to look for changed career prospects and for diversification in their current role. This calls for leaders to clearly demonstrate their commitment to their staff and to invest in them. This also links to the stresses and strains that have been created by the pandemic. There has been a growth in mental health difficulties and this has been met by an increased expectation amongst employees that their wellbeing and mental health needs will be addressed through an employer that sees the value in a happy and healthy workforce.

These pressures mean that investment in wellbeing support services, in increased training and in coaching and mentoring are vital to keep the commitment of our staff and also to develop them even further through a skills based investment. There is a direct link between this type of investment, individual happiness, performance, productivity and profitability. This coaching series offers affordable bite size development on aspects of individual and leadership based activities and can be considered by individuals or by organisations more widely for their staff.

Personal Development Coaching

In order to gain the edge we sometimes just need that extra help and finetuning that coaching can provide. Coaching is very much about drawing on strengths and learning how to capitalise on them, it can help to identify ‘blockages’ for you such as assertiveness, creativity, working to your values and the art of negotiating and influencing. These sessions are self contained but of course they can be a starter toward a more complete coaching experience in which a plan is created with goals mapping out the next 12 months.

Coaching these subjects radically shift you toward the new you!

Leadership Masterclass

This series of one hour coaching sessions create pointers and further self-development to consider to become a more rounded leader equipped to meet the challenges being posed in these times of uncertainty. Being able to grow self awareness and to truly appreciate your leadership style and traits is a vital part of leading with empathy and being able to be the leader to your people that you aim to be. The masterclasses also support you in passing these messages on and can equip you to run such development and awareness sessions within your teams.

These sessions also target the assets that good leaders should possess to better support their people through the continued pressures of remote working and to be confident to understand the theory of change and how it affects us all as individuals in uniquely different ways. Nuancing our leadership skills is hard work, coaching is hard work and if you enjoy a challenge then why not try one or more of these online sessions.

Each online session costs just £50 or £120 for three booked as a course
For more information, contact me and click on this image. Good luck!
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Professional Pragmatism

When simply being you may need nuancing!

Reflecting on new ways to function well and influence your work culture

Do you sometimes find that there are times when your desire to achieve something or to even hold a good and open conversation in the workplace is compromised by organisational culture and individuals in that culture and does this disappoint or frustrate you?

This can lead to a feeling of personal frustration where you feel compelled to be true to yourself or perhaps even more deeply, due to jarring with your long held values, the outcome can become conflict or disassociation from your organisation. Leadership theorists would state that true leadership requires you as an individual to always tackle this situation through challenge, to walk your values every day. However, professional pragmatism and Machiavelli can equip you with a real world view and with an empowering solution to this dilemma.

Machiavelli suggested the potential to adopt a different route to managing such a situation. Adopting professional pragmatism, a sense of wisdom about the way your organisation functions practically or through entrenched culture, may lead you to deal with such compromises differently. This may also allow you to exercise different leadership skills to negotiate and influence a solution. Negotiating and influencing is a recognised means to reaching mutual solutions that are successful. This solution may be imperfect in leadership theory but adopting the realism of the culture you work within will achieve results and importantly avoid the head on collision that you may feel that can cause catastrophic disillusionment leading to you seeking other employment or to finding yourself in a destructive conflict in any case. This approach can then be better seen as influencing and changing culture from the inside.

Values make us and they can change culture positively

Machiavelli is often associated with dark practices but this aspect of achieving ambitions and objectives through pragmatic means is often overlooked as a viable and successful means to keep personal control and to achieve results in the real world. Another way of potentially viewing this is the concept of not trying to ‘win every battle’ but rather look to the longer term in order to nuance your leadership influence. Ultimately, success has many facets and by maintaining working relationships, reaching a team based practical solution then the longer term success of an individual and the wellbeing flowing from that may potentially demonstrate greater maturity and less naivety.

The theory on professional pragmatism

Badaracco is a contemporary academic who has written on this subject. He has taught this subject for some time at Harvard and describes the awareness that this approach almost represents a ‘worldview’ which can function in the reality of the imperfect workplace. This of course does not deny circumstances in which compromise may not be acceptable and a stand should be made for several different reasons.

Occasionally, this thinking allows the notion that the pursuit of all values and personal aims and objectives might be viewed as idealistic or naïve and that the truth in an imperfect world might be as challenging as ‘what if there is no right answer?’. This may mean that the right answer is the one that best accords with organisational values and the circumstances prevailing at that exact time to achieve the best outcome possible at that moment. This also recognises that changing an embedded culture cannot be achieved overnight and requires careful work to influence.

Leadership is a struggle by flawed human beings to make some important values real and effective in the world as it is

Joseph Badaracco, Harvard.
Pause for thought!

Self-limiting beliefs and coaching

A fundamental role for an executive or business coach is to engage with their client and to assist them without leading them to find positive solutions and to be able to ‘unblock’ any of the issues that may be preventing them from being their better selves. An aspect of this is to challenge and explore any self-limiting beliefs that might be expressed by clients. These can originate from a range of diverse sources such as childhood, interpretation of learning or life experience amongst many. The individual can start to assume these self-limiting beliefs are unassailable facts over time and they become custom and practice. One such self-limiting belief might be a literal martyrdom to feeling that values must always be unswervingly followed and that there can be no successful personal or professional relationship had with those that do not exactly share those values. This can create an environment of winning and losing for the holder of this self-limiting belief and leading to a belief that true self-worth comes from being the source of knowledge that guides others. In some senses this can become egotistical or judgmental to the casual observer yet to the individual practicing such self-limiting beliefs in fact it feels righteous and true.

Coaching can support you to express values differently and better

Having a sense of personal ‘agency’

In mythology, the ‘Fates’ are a group of three weaving goddesses who assign individual destinies to mortals at birth. The Fates were Clotho (the Spinner), Lachesis (the Allotter) and Atropos (the Inflexible). It is possible that in waging a direct battle on individuals in an embedded culture that Atropos is the one to blame for leading the actions of the individual. However, I would like to suggest something more updated on this internal conflict, the idea of ‘agency’.  Wanting to be ‘me’ regardless of the consequences shows a lack of faith in personal agency.

So what is agency? It is the ability to take action or to choose what action to take, to influence your own life, to change your own thoughts and to have faith in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks or situations. Having a sense of agency is also associated with being able to take responsibility for your actions and having an ‘internal locus of control’ over what happens.

Of course there are many things outside of our control. We may think that we should be 6’4” and look just like Brad Pitt, or have a wonderfully slim body, long flowing hair and look like Scarlett Johansson but such dreams are outside of our control, and as such we should focus on ‘controlling the controllables’. This means that you can acknowledge a different way to influence the jarring of personal values with embedded organisational culture.  One of the things you can control is that moment when you say: ‘This is who I am. I’m me. What do I do about this situation?’

Being true to yourself but thinking differently retains personal agency

When simply being you may need nuancing!

In their soon to be released marketing book, ‘Just Evil Enough’, the authors, Alistair Croll and Emily Ross talk about how a successful marketeer of the future needs to be prepared to “subvert systems to create attention that can be turned into profitable demand”.

My contention here is that this thinking is relevant to how we view ourselves and the choices that we make to tackle situations and to achieve what we want to. In other words, how we achieve a sense of agency, of controlling our controllables, and tackle some professional dilemmas with pragmatism. This allows us as individuals to turn subverting systems around and to point that insight to ourselves, rather than the market. So what could subverting your usual way of seeing a values based dilemma look like? This may mean demonstrating the bravery to step outside of your known mediums to find new, creative and more challenging ways to think.

The authors propose that to do this effectively then our traditional normative thinking must be replaced by more radical formative thinking in which norms are challenged. This may include the limitations of our own ego, unconscious bias, our desire to be heard and of course our desire to be right.

If we simply respond to our ego and its need to just be us then this may result in us reacting instantly to our fight or flight instinct. This inevitably limits us, may create a bias in our judgement and propel us to think we are right without mounting a challenge to react and respond differently. Remember therefore by using professional pragmatism, by subverting our thoughts that we can be much more than our thoughts. In these circumstances when we gain agency and control, when we do more than react to our instinctive deeper self, then we instantly create a different dynamic, try it, it may change your career.

Click this image if you would like more information…

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Disruption UK is not OK

Fighting Back…

Uncertain times for all…

Fighting Back…

The last two and a half years has seen huge disruption to us all as individuals, both professionally and personally but also to businesses. This disruption has ranged from reeling at change resulting from the pandemic, to assessing a global economic crisis created by booming oil prices and conflict in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. Now the time has come to grapple with a new way forward, to fight back and to make the very most of the opportunities and challenges ahead. So why is now the right time to invest in coaching in you or your business? Read on…

Take time to reflect and invest in yourself

All Affected Somehow!

How are you affected by these uncertain times? In one way or another all our plans have been affected by the last two years and what might be yet to come in a deeper recession. There is no doubt that some groups have been disproportionately affected more. Women are estimated to have suffered career damage up to 80% more than their male counterparts due to increased caring responsibilities that have fallen on their shoulders and may still be enduring as working from home often involves a much trickier family balance.

What can make up the lost ground? How can employers keep women in key roles and develop them to such roles?

Executive and business coaching is an essential investment by our organisations in their people and their talent, it demonstrates confidence in people and of all interventions, coaching has a proven track record of succeeding and demonstrating the highest results for the best return on investment. McKinsey research in the USA also shows the same disproportionate impact of this time on female entrepreneurs and business coaching offers some ability to create a plan for the next three years to stabilise and create personal growth and growth in the business.

New normal does not have to be ‘same old, same old’!

Why Wait? Act Now! Coach to adapt!

Some may think that coaching is something to do in a few months when more normal ways of working may have returned and the economy might have settled but in fact coaching is vital for now because coaching tackles the impact of unprecedented and unexpected change on individuals and a high quality professional coach will also understand how to deal with the presence of trauma for clients. Now is the time to restoke the fires of careers and professional development conversations. Coaching supports leaders and ambitious aspiring employees to adapt, to develop and to become a part of the ‘Great Reshuffle’ rather than ‘Great Resignation’.

‘Now is the time to restoke the fires of careers’

Coaching provides the way to be on the front foot and to make the most of the opportunities ahead and to exploit and maximise changed ways of working. In this way individual leaders can hit the ground running and drive success through an active career plan with a coach to maximise strengths and to set and support progressive goals.

People Get Results

The Strengths of Coaching

Coaching creates the opportunity to reflect and make the most of strengths!

It is so important to truly step off the merry-go-round of busyness and to treat ourselves to reflection and to development time. Though diaries may be chaotic or for some they may be clearer, either way this is a unique and priceless time to develop as a leader, block out time to book a coaching session in which coaching can identify a defining successful outcome for the next 12 months and how to make the most of all the current opportunities through maximising our strengths. This may range from development opportunities as an individual or leading transformation within teams or the organisation as a whole.

Taking time for yourself in coaching, back yourself!

Coaching drives objective planning and tangibly delivers results!

Now is the time to come to difficult decisions on the way forward, to take stock and to create a plan to achieve goals.  This is opportunity time as the working world may never truly be the same again. How to take time out to develop and make the most of  current circumstances to balance achieving ambitions? Now is the time to spend time thinking more about your wellbeing and being the best version of you so that you identify and take the opportunities before you. It is possible to take the best elements of what has changed to become happier and more effective through coaching.

Goal setting gets results!

Coaching encourages objectivity and challenges bias

As you use some of the space created by coaching and take a step back, coaching will enable you through challenging conversations and a focus on results to think through exactly where you are now and what you need to do to reach where you want to be. A coach provides a neutral sounding board and the objectivity to talk through what are the blockers to your progress and how to navigate them and to do so in a completely transparent and open way within a confidential process. Coaching offers no judgement but it does create challenge, mostly the ability to challenge yourself, to consider how you can best learn from experience to move forward. This will create guiding principles for your next 12 months and a new and clearly defined empowering belief in yourself.

Impossible is nothing

Muhammad Ali
Take your opportunities

Coaching provides structure and accountability

Coaching will create the truest form of accountability, by holding a mirror up to yourself, you become truly accountable. Your coach uses a range of tools to support this but one of the most powerful is your annual plan on page and the accountability that you have to achieve your monthly goals that create the success that you seek in all of the key themes of your life right now. Your coach supports you in dealing with situations and creates the impetus to deal with obstacles and move forward faster, unimpeded. Coaching helps you to see issues very differently and you will proactively develop and deliver and be truly accountable for the changes you make.

www.newlevelresults.co.uk

New Level Results Coaching and The Curve Software

I am also an associate coach of New Level Results and we are one of the only coaches organisations where you can see and track transformational results and the return on investment in coaching using award winning software called ‘The Curve’. Using this software and results based coaching methodology creates a tangible and measurable plan to enable you to achieve far beyond your ambitions and to face challenges that you might never have dreamed possible. A coxless team of four women were coached using this methodology by New Level Results coaches to become world beaters and to be the first to row across the Pacific Ocean from California to Australia.

Book a discovery call to access a free coaching consultation with me to discover how to achieve your goals in uncertain times. Click on the image below:

https://applebrightcoaching.co.uk/welcome/contact/

Previous Blog Posts Below

  • Unlock Your Team’s Genius: How the Leader-Leader Model Ignites Epic Growth

     By Mark Bates, Founder & Leadership Growth Coach, Applebright Coaching To every visionary leader and purpose-driven business owner reading this: What if your greatest growth lever wasn’t tighter control—but radical trust? For years, we’ve been sold a lie: that leadership means having all the answers, directing every move, and bearing sole responsibility for outcomes. This “hero…

  • Strengths v Weaknesses – How to Power Up not Down!

    Strengths v Weaknesses – How to Power Up not Down!

    We Routinely Aim for Mediocrity! 𝘈 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘤 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭/𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘵𝘩 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘰𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘺. ‘𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵?’ 𝘐 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘢𝘺, ‘𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘢 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘵𝘩𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴’. 𝘚𝘛𝘖𝘗 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰…

  • ‘Getting an Edge in 2023’ as an SME – Part IV – People are Gold

    ‘Getting an Edge in 2023’ as an SME – Part IV – People are Gold

    Part IV – Valuing people as the greatest asset of the business and being a growth business in the face of ‘the Great Resignation’. Repositioning your business toward your people In this final part of the Getting ahead for 2023 blog series for SME’s the most significant asset of the business, it’s people, is considered…

  • ‘Getting an Edge in 2023’ as an SME – Part III

    ‘Getting an Edge in 2023’ as an SME – Part III

    Part III – Business plans for growth, adopting a systems thinking approach and digitalisation for SME’s Having an annual plan including scenario testing Making the most of opportunities whilst shielding the business from the difficulties facing the UK in 2023 is all about adopting a positive mindset as a business owner. Confidence is needed to…

  • ‘Getting an Edge in 2023’ as an SME – Part II

    ‘Getting an Edge in 2023’ as an SME – Part II

    Part II – Tackling the economic headwinds of energy and fuel costs, inflation and raised borrowing costs           This is Part II of a series of four blogs examining how SME’s can not only plan for the difficulties facing them in 2023, but potentially capitalise on some of the unique opportunities surrounding them. This series…

  • ‘Getting an Edge’ in 2023 as an SME – Part I

    ‘Getting an Edge’ in 2023 as an SME – Part I

    Part I – Growing the business when facing a storm This is Part I in a series of four blogs detailing how Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s) should be planning to meet the challenges of 2023. Rather than setting a course for ‘survival’ following a detailed plan will enable a growth mindset that will pay…

  • Six tools to balance your business and home life when they collide

    Six tools to balance your business and home life when they collide

    Balancing family life and running a business is a major headache. This can be ever more challenging for women in business. The stresses of the summer silly season of juggling the business and children take their toll. This toolkit will help you to transform the way that you approach this challenge. Read on to know…

  • Fear of not being in control is natural, but how can you overcome it?

    Fear of not being in control is natural, but how can you overcome it?

    How often do you feel stressed by the fact that you can’t control something or its outcome? Your 6 point plan will make a positive difference. The sense that you need to gain control of an issue but cannot do so is all consuming and dominates every thought when it takes hold of you. As…

  • Your Online One Hour Coaching Masterclasses

    Your Online One Hour Coaching Masterclasses

    One hour coaching sessions – On the go A Coaching Workout For many the new normal of our working lives includes some form of hybrid or remote working. For others who may have continued at work throughout this time or have recently returned fully to work the challenge of finding time to invest in ourselves,…

  • Professional Pragmatism

    Professional Pragmatism

    When simply being you may need nuancing! Do you sometimes find that there are times when your desire to achieve something or to even hold a good and open conversation in the workplace is compromised by organisational culture and individuals in that culture and does this disappoint or frustrate you? This can lead to a…

  • Disruption UK is not OK

    In uncertain times post pandemic and during a recession using an Executive Coach or Business coach can help you to navigate to a successful career or business. Contact Mark at Applebright Coaching